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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.wildstar.net!news.ececs.uc.edu!newsfeeds.sol.net!ix.netcom.com!enews.sgi.com!news.corp.sgi.com!fido.asd.sgi.com!neteng!lm From: lm@neteng.engr.sgi.com (Larry McVoy) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.sys.sgi.misc Subject: Re: no such thing as a "general user community" Followup-To: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.sys.sgi.misc Date: 31 Mar 1997 20:45:23 GMT Organization: Silicon Graphics Inc., Mountain View, CA Lines: 51 Message-ID: <5hp7p3$1qb@fido.asd.sgi.com> References: <331BB7DD.28EC@net5.net> <333EA3EF.41C67EA6@consys.com> <333EE416.ABD322C@FreeBSD.org> <5hn00k$dio@fido.asd.sgi.com> <5hnam9$393@hoopoe.psc.edu> Reply-To: lm@slovax.engr.sgi.com NNTP-Posting-Host: neteng.engr.sgi.com X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:38221 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:6537 comp.sys.sgi.misc:29587 Peter Berger (peterb@hoopoe.psc.edu) wrote: : The point is that it doesn't matter which way -you- think the : hardware differences are skewed. Frankly, I'm sure that Jordan : would have objected to your conclusions even if FreeBSD won : across the board: because your conclusions are completely, : utterly, and didactically bogus. You can't compare apples to : oranges and then claim that the oranges are apples because you : like apple juice. Um, Peter. I hate to burst your bubble, but after Jordan flamed me I went and tested FreeBSD vs Linux on the same machine, a P133. I didn't think I needed to do so because the differences between a P120 and a P133 are typically in the noise, especially when measuring the OS. At any rate, the results came out exactly as I expected. The so called hardware skew that you keep harping on made no difference. I'm pretty sure I published those results on this list as part of the TCP latency flamewar about a year ago. Don't you find it the slightest bit strange that even though the benchmark is free software, even though it is part of the FreeBSD benchmarks, and even though a couple of years have gone by, nobody from the FreeBSD team (or anyone else, for that matter) has stood up, published results and said "see, McVoy is a big fat idiot and here are the results that prove it". I challenge you to go take the benchmark, get a machine, install Linux, install FreeBSD and come back and tell me how the benchmark mislead us, skewed our perception, or whatever your current favorite whine is. I challenge you to state what conclusions I drew that were "utterly bogus" and prove that they were (or are) "utterly bogus". You won't, because (a) you can't, and (b) you just want to whine. : The point is that saying "FreeBSD wins" or "Linux wins" when : the underlying hardware you're making your "comparisons" on : is different. If I compared two versions of IRIX, one running : on an Indy and another running on a Personal Iris and then told : the world that "IRIX X.X wins: pipe bw, system call, etc." the world : would ask me what sort of crack I was smoking. And they would be : right. Yup, they would. And if the hardware made any substantive difference, you would be absolutely right. But in the lmbench paper, the P5 that FreeBSD was on was actually slightly faster than the Linux P5. It's hard to claim I was skewing the results against FreeBSD. And it is also hard to claim that I was skewing the results against Linux. I've measured lots of PCs and the difference between 120 & 133 is just not enough to be an issue, it's in the noise. I'm happy to be proven wrong. I'm waiting.... -- --- Larry McVoy lm@sgi.com http://reality.sgi.com/lm (415) 933-1804